The Doctor was always a male character; it was an essential and foundational part of who the character was and the story of Doctor Who followed certain
patterns because of this. Now, because they have fundamentally altered the
character it is no longer Doctor Who as we knew it. It will become something... different. It
can never be what it was even if after this iteration they go back to a male
character. I look at it this way: For a character to have genuine
value, that character has to have a few consistent core characteristics. When those
core characteristics are fundamentally changed, the character is irrevocably
changed. So all of this talk about the Doctor being a man or a woman changes
the essence of the character. What was once reliable and understood now becomes
unrecognizable and distracting. Granted there are revelations and secrets
revealed over the course of a character’s story arc that al…